Pet internet celebrity, a tool for making money for others, cats and dogs

Cats and dogs are becoming the king of traffic.

Young people have always had a hot demand for "cute pets". Whether it is renting a Shiba Inu offline to have afternoon tea with you or giving a cat a dance video online, we seem to be used to finding comfort in our pets.

Cute, harmless, juvenile, and anthropomorphic. If you can make some just-right small mistakes, it would be perfect - pet videos are becoming a new consumption growth point.

“在凌晨刚下班的出租车上，点开一只猫咪和主人击掌的视频，感觉整个人像一块黄油一样融化了”，萌宠爱好者@栗子对我说，她目前最大的安慰剂就是萌宠视频，虽然镜头那边的宠物与她素不相识。

活在镜头下的宠物们，催生了一条新兴的互联网赛道，拉动着价值千亿的产业，收割着千万个城市中的孤独云爹妈，变成一门收益乐观的生意。 The halo of

traffic belongs to them, but nothing belongs to them.

01

When cats and dogs stand in front of the camera, it is difficult for even @六zi to recall, from which year did the cats and dogs on the screen become "Internet celebrity".

给她印象最深的，是在微博上凭借折耳猫端午和萨摩耶妞妞成为大V的“回忆专用小马甲”，他的网传黑料“罄竹难书”，是很多人关注的第一个萌宠博主，也是很多人第一个取关的萌宠博主。

There is also the pastoral cat emoticon that she is still using. The cat in the picture is called Lou Lou. It died of illness four years ago. Its owner was commemorating it last month.

The first generation of pet internet celebrities made their fortunes by the secondary spread of emoticons, and brought a lot of laughter to the people in the pre-Internet era.

But they were quickly iterated - the short video era is taking big strides.

You must have seen many videos of cats dancing "seaweed dance". The cat sat in the owner's arms in an awkward position, with his claws pinched. The rhythm of scouting and the cat's helpless expression has harvested a lot of screams and laughter.

Even though many animal doctors have already popularized the science, dancing challenges can cause damage to cats' joints from a physiological point of view. But to this day, you can still see many cats dancing to "open business", and still look desperate.

宠物网红和人类网红的异曲同工之处，就是靠一副美丽可爱的皮囊走红，激发看客的肾上腺素或者催产素，再用不断升级的“活儿”来留住观众。

The difference is that people can choose how to "hurt" themselves to earn traffic, but there is no choice for pets.

To become an internet celebrity pet, you must learn more skills, otherwise it will be no different from the Teddy who can bow downstairs in your house - people always look forward to seeing the rarer "business" in short videos.

So, short videos like "Cat's Claw Kitchen" appeared.

The photographer held the cat's claws and posed for the photo, pretended that the cat was holding a kitchen knife, beat an egg, and operated the oven button. Finally, he placed the cat in front of the finished product to take a photo. Under the arrangement of Taiwanese books, the cat has the character of "King of Cuisine", even if the blade is only a few centimeters away from it.

If it is made by an ordinary person, there are really no highlights. After all, there are too many excellent food bloggers on the Internet. But what if it was a cat? Traffic is the best answer.

This is far from the most successful case among pet internet celebrities. Without a character, it is difficult to remember by the Internet.

The "old urine" in the internet celebrity "Peeing is a cat" is a tabby cat who is good at turning against the guests. She is cunning and smart, and she can always beat the male owner up all over the ground for teeth.

网红“猫咪叫不苦”是一只粘人撒娇的橘猫，和女主人之间的互动，总让人忍不住幻想这是一个理想化的婴幼儿：懂事、不哭闹、毛茸茸、会适当地撒娇。

“田园宝贝儿”家的大咪小咪是看家护院的狸花猫，和主人“流利对话”，可以在深夜的粮仓里加班抓老鼠，也可以蹲在姥姥的床头守夜，是敬业的打工猫。

German Shepherd "glutinous rice" is a dog with an IQ similar to that of an adult. It can pick up express delivery, look at the door, supervise children to do homework, pick up children from school, and help people watch and reverse cars. The image the master created for him is no different from the butler in the family.

Pet internet celebrities satisfy the public's expectations for an ideal, unique personality and dramatic pet.

一位mcn公司的从业者告诉我：“很大一部分网红萌宠短视频，会设置在一个温馨容易代入的家庭场景中，背后还需要团队精细规划故事与剧本，当然，也需要宠物本身极高的配合度。”

如果一切拍摄都建立在不伤害宠物的基础上，倒也无伤大雅。 Until the pet food broadcast appeared, things gradually changed.

The original goal of pet food broadcast is to unzip. On YouTube's Dog ASMR channel, UP hosts use radio devices to record the sound of pets eating. The purpose is to eat, not to act.

Similar domestic videos also tend to show the process of scientific meal preparation for pets. There will be many different kinds of freeze-dried, raw flesh, and vegetables, fruit and snacks for meals. Pet food practitioner @南南后白 told me: "The gastrointestinal structure of cats and dogs is actually very suitable for digesting pure meat. There is no problem with eating fresh raw meat, but you need to do regular insect removal in the body."

However, gradually, the pet's dining table became more and more exaggerated. Distinctive treasures, mountain and sea flavors, and various strange animal parts. Kangaroo meat and venison are no longer rare, as well as horse lips, cow throat, and hairy rabbit ears.

In the comment section, he sighed: "I'm not as good as the dogs yet", "Do you still lack dogs?", while waiting for the owner in the video to throw more strange food into the food bowl next time.

作为宠物吃播的资深观众，@栗子告诉我，“一开始看宠物吃播是很爽的。听他们大快朵颐的声音，甚至有点酣畅淋漓的过瘾。后来越看越觉得不对劲”。

Although she has no experience in raising large dogs, she still wonders: Can a dog really eat such meat and snacks for one meal? If you accumulate food like a child or have overnutrition, will such food sprinkles also harm your pet to some extent?

Pet food practitioner @人版生子 also has the same concern: "What is certain is that it is wrong for pets to eat too many snacks. Scientific feeding is regular and quantitative and nutritious. Pets that eat too much snacks are like children, and they don't like to eat serious food, which is not good for pets."

The more eye-catching bloggers feed excessive food to golden retrievers and German collies with extremely obedience, and eat dozens of chicken legs in a meal to create a big eater among pets;

may trick them into eating jump candy or chili. Then use the camera to record the scenes where they are indesistible by nature and cannot help crying out of physiology. In such a scene that violates the principles of animal ethics, the owner will also accompany an inappropriate canned laughter.

Just under the video of this golden retriever eating jump candy, a total of more than 1.7 million likes were accumulated.

It is like a more absurd circus performance, with the protagonist changing from a beast to a gentle large dog or a beautiful short cat.

02

无法量化的伤害

有意思的是，最常出现在这类视频的评论区的争论是：

“这样做对猫/狗是不好的。”

“这是我自己的猫/狗，自己的孩子我难道不爱吗？”

事实是，有些主人对待宠物的做法，和不负责任的父母没太大区别。 An MCN company practitioner told me that if a pet dies halfway through, he will replace it with a similar-looking one to replace it. "This kind of operation does exist."

The cat and dog behind the cute pet internet celebrities are not much better than humans with 996, and they are not very comfortable at the physiological level.

Some of the harms are obvious, and you can see the discomfort of the pets with your naked eyes.

动物医生反复强调过，穿衣服对猫狗来说是一件不舒服也不愉悦的事，它们的皮毛足以御寒，过于繁琐的衣服只会让它们行动迟缓、身体僵硬。 Even the most expensive Hanfu and Lolita are not as happy for animals as humans wear them.

What is particularly true is that it is the same for coloring and applying makeup to pets on their faces. Once the pigment cannot be metabolized, licking the hair will have the possibility of poisoning.

Not to mention the fact that the dog is covered with tiger marks, it is funny to most viewers in the comments section, and to the cute pet lover @吧, this is an almost humiliating act.

It is risky to do nail art for pets. If you mistakenly take nail polish, you may be poisoned.

induces cats to bite off tape, and once accidentally ingested, it may lead to digestive tract obstruction.

Excessive intake of catnip may make cats difficult to breathe, resulting in excessive nerve excitation in cats, dyspnea and death from suffocation in kittens.

The animals cannot walk normally after drinking, and they are indeed "silly". However, cats and dogs do not have the enzyme that breaks down alcohol. After ingesting alcohol, it will cause symptoms such as excitement, vomiting, difficulty breathing and disordered consciousness.

Holding the cat for too long may cause the cat to experience dizziness and vomiting, and holding the cat's two forelimbs too hard, otherwise it may cause the cat to suffer from dislocation and fracture.

在引起猫的应激反应之后，不应该再抱着它跳舞了，更不应该配上“超兴奋”的字幕，误导评论区的观众赞叹宠物“可爱”、“开心成了狗”。

A deeper issue is, can we be calmly anthropomorphized by pets? Or, why do we always interpret pet behavior wishfully?

@Lizi used to like to watch interactive theaters where cute pets talk, dance, and perform. When watching, smiles would appear on the corners of her mouth, and she felt extremely healing and satisfied. But after laughing, she noticed a subtle weirdness -

Who can guarantee that this meow must be the phrase "mom" with the subtitles?

03

The pet internet celebrity

The pets that were created were standing in front of the camera, and people stood behind the pets - Behind the thriving cute pet business are concrete profit-seeking people.

The White Paper on Pet Consumption Trends in 2021" shows: "In 2020, my country's pet industry market size is close to 300 billion yuan, and by 2023, the scale will reach 445.6 billion yuan. The advancement of new media technology and the explosion of social media such as short videos have driven the development of 'cloud pet absorption' and brought more market size and potential consumers to the pet industry."

Kuaishou's report records that "there is a live pet broadcast every 5.4 seconds." This is indeed a track with glorious glory. The pets on the screen are working with big eyes, and the mouths outside the screen are inseparable from "monetizing, selling goods, and relying on a cat/dog to achieve financial freedom."

People can make a profit, but for animals, it may be just that there is an extra expensive can for dinner.

The famous pet internet celebrity "Mr. White Meow" has the ability to choose independently, but animals do not.

There was once a non-fiction writing article that recorded a cute pet blogger who had passed away the beautiful short cat who died unfortunately after becoming popular. The cat in the story fell on the road to becoming an internet celebrity. How many pets are there in reality that are "working" on this road.

The animals that can actively cooperate with human performances are often highly obedient animals. We have obtained healing and laughter from these videos, but we always ignore them. They may be doing a "action that goes against nature."

When dealing with pets, radicals hope to give them equal rights to all living beings, while conservatives believe that they are nothing more than human property and an object. But the reason why humans are the spirit of all things is because they have the motivation to choose kindness -

"Ethics is not only related to humans, but also animals. Animals are as eager for happiness, suffering and fear of death as we do. This ethical principle requires humans to bear unlimited responsibilities and obligations to animals, avoid harming them within their power, and rescue them in danger."

Perhaps, this is the most ideal relationship between us and pets.